A regular Cabinet meeting was held today, chaired by Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan.
Before proceeding to the agenda, the Prime Minister gave a number of instructions. The first instruction went to State Revenue Committee Chairman Vardan Harutyunyan, who was told to enforce a clear-cut schedule of working hours in order to ensure the provision of uninterrupted customs services to economic entities during the non-working days in December and the Holiday Season in January.
“Mr. Harutyunyan, it seems to be a good opportunity to set up an emergency mode. We are in for a tide of traffic. Therefore, we need to understand where the bottlenecks are so that we could provide most comfortable conditions for importers. We have got positive feedback as to the goods cleared within 5 days instead of 25, for example. I do not know whether 5 days is good or not, but I feel that the schedule needs to be reviewed once again,” the Prime Minister said and turned to the President of the Central Bank with the request to ensure banks’ operations on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.
The Premier next called on the Head of State Commission for Protection of Economic Competition to pay greater attention to any unjustified price-hikes that may occur during Christmas holidays and / or prevent anticompetitive actions in the market prices of consumer goods.
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“We suggest being mindful of the interests of economic entities, if possible. You should intervene only when you realize that the price-hike is artificial due to the entity’s dominant market position in order not to become a burden for businesses,” the Prime Minister emphasized.
Karen Karapetyan’s next assignment had to do with one of his first recommendations formulated at an earlier Cabinet meeting, which called for solutions aimed at stimulating the use of idle real estate.
“Extensive preparative work has been carried out by relevant government agencies and by the working group consisting of their representatives, who developed the basic principles of and approaches to the reform of the real market tax system. The property tax system reform should first of all be based on the principle of justice, and economic mechanisms should be established under that principle. The tax rate must be linked to the market value of the property. As to the housing estate, the new mechanism should provide a tax deferment for households with insufficient income until the time of alienation. The reform should be phased out in several stages, considering the technical bottlenecks. A set of other questions are still under discussion, and different approaches are being explored,” the Prime Minister said. The Head of Government instructed the Minister of Finance to discuss with the other stakeholders the above proposals and finalize the reform of the property tax system in order to submit a relevant bill to the Government Staff by January 31, 2017.
The Minister of Education and Science was given two weeks to submit a set of comprehensive measures, including a methodology and an action plan, aimed at introducing a system of e-education and developing appropriate control mechanisms in the new academic year.
Given the importance providing modern financial and economic education in schools, Karen Karapetyan instructed the Minister of Education and Science to submit a timetable of steps within a 3-week period aimed at introducing financial and economic training courses in public schools so that the program might be enforced starting the new schooling year.
Karen Karapetyan also issued an instruction for the Minister-Chief of Government Staff David Haroutunyan: “I am hereby instructing you to arrange Prime Minister’s separate meetings with Armenia’s 10 major taxpayers, 10 major importers, 10 major exporters, 5-10 key investors and 5 major banks during the upcoming week to discuss the problems faced in their everyday activities.”
The Government approved the basic provisions at the heart of the “Armenia’s jurisdiction” program. The program aims to develop a platform that will make Armenia attractive for foreign companies, and create incentives for financial flows, as well as for repatriation of human resources. The Government next decided to set up a foundation referred to as “Armenia’s jurisdiction,” which aims to provide a basis for re-domiciliation n Armenia so that any organization domiciled in a country could move to another State without suspending its activities.
In a bid to improve the quality of services provided to beneficiaries, the Government passed a decision, which provides that starting January 1, 2017 benefit and pension applications may be filed with any local office, regardless of beneficiary’s place of permanent residence.
The meeting approved the draft presidential decree “On establishing the Embassy of the Republic of Armenia in the Republic of Moldova.” The decree seeks to establish embassies with a view to strengthening and developing bilateral relations and making a better use of existing opportunities.
The Executive amended a previous decision to enable the citizens of the Republic of Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic and Iraq to get Armenian passports at the diplomatic missions and consular offices by December 31, 2017.